Prairies

Prairies are glorious things. They can be a lot of things, not just tall grass and wildflowers, but often that’s what they are. They are subtle, though. Depending on the soil type, drainage, sun exposure, frequency of fire and lots of other factors, they support different flora and fauna.

Kim and I have been getting directly involved with The Prairie Enthusiasts, specifically the Empire-Sauk chapter that covers Dane, Columbia and Sauk counties in Wisconsin. This past weekend we spent about six hours pulling noxious, invasive weeds such as Wild Parsnip and sweet clover.

I’m starting to slowly learn my plants. It’s not easy for me, especially since I prefer to spend my time looking for and photographing birds, bugs and herps, but if you want to know where the butterflies are, you better learn your plants. I just learned there’s a state-endangered leafhopper, the Red-tailed Prairie Leafhopper (Aflexia rubranura) that relies on Prairie Dropseed, a grass.

Here’s a photo I made recently at Shurch-Thomson of a section of prairie in bloom. This section was restored in the last 20 years. I used a 300mm f/4 lens on a Nikon D700 and set the multiple exposure to 10 exposures.

Prairie in Bloom

Moved to Madison

Kim and I moved to Madison, Wisconsin on June 13. It’s been a busy three weeks since (and before) then, but we’ve managed to get out a few times. There are some remnant prairie preserves nearby, and we’ve visited the TNC preserve at Spring Green in Sauk county twice now. We’ve read there are eight species of tiger beetle at Spring Green, and I’ve seen two and Kim has seen a third. In addition to Grasshopper Sparrows, Dickcissels, Prairie Racerunners and lots of cool butterflies, there are some nice tiger beetles (mostly Big Sand and Festive) and lots of robber flies. Here’s a photo of a Big Sand Tiger Beetle (Cicindela formosa).

Big Sand Tiger Beetle

I’ve begun sharing my photos on Flickr, as it’s a much easier way of getting photos on the web and easier for others to just see what’s new. My photostream is here.

Wandering Tattler

Back in September I went to one of my favorite shorebird photographing spots — Pillar Point near Half Moon Bay. It’s about a 30 minute drive from my house and pretty easy to get to. Some days it’s full of people and dogs, but if the tide is in, then where the birds are the dogs aren’t.

This day the light was fabulous and the wind was low and there were quite a few birds — Sanderlings, Semipalmated Plovers and this Wandering Tattler. It’s my first ever good photo of a tattler and I was happy.

Wandering Tattler

New Web Site

I finally got around to updating my web site. I’ve reduced the number of images, trying to be more selective, and gone with a gallery layout, which I hope is easier to navigate. It’s also just HTML, no JavaScript, which should be faster, easier to maintain, and easier for search engines.

I’ve put up a few new images, including this one of an Acorn Woodpecker I photographed at Arastradero Park in Palo Alto.

Acorn Woodpecker

I photographed this guy back in October. There are a number of woodpeckers using this dead tree as a granary for storing acorns for the coming winter.

Pt. Reyes, June 29

My friend Adam told me where I could find the puntareyes subspecies of Zerene Fritillary (Speyeria zerene), an engangered species/subspecies of butterfly found only in and possibly around Pt. Reyes National Seashore. They start flying at the end of June, and I had found some last year, but wanted a better photograph, so headed out again this year. It can be tricky to find a warm, sunny day along the coast at this time of year, and it was pretty cold, gray and drippy when I started. When I got to the spot where the frits are it was still cloudy and cold, but this grasshopper nymph was hopping around. I find it remarkable how much it looks like the surrounding sand.

Grasshopper nymph

By about 1 o’clock the sun came out and pretty soon I spied some frits flying around. I was able to capture this one nectaring. They don’t stay still and are challenging to photograph. The flower is about two inches off the ground, so I’m on my belly and elbows here.

Zerene Fritillary

Monterey Bay, August 10

I’m going retro with this blog until I get caught up a bit. I promise I won’t go back to my childhood.

On August 10 I went out with Monterey Seabirds to Monterey Bay. It was another foggy day, but that’s what we get this time of year. The seas weren’t flat, but they weren’t bad. You need a bit of wind if you want tubenoses to be flying anyhow.

At one point we had lost sight of land and were cruising about 8 knots and had thousands of Sooty Shearwaters and hundreds of other birds cruising along with us. We also had hundreds of Pacific White-sided and Northern Right Whale Dolphins and a couple of Humpback Whales doing the same, but they were mostly in the water.

I commented to Jeff how cool it was and he said, “Yeah, it’s liking being back in the Eocene.” There was barely any indication of human presence, aside from our diesel-fume-spewing boat, and these animals have been doing this for thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of years. It was easy to just be present and enjoy the spectacle of life around us.

I’ve been out on Monterey Bay for almost ten years and have yet to get a good photo of a Northern Right Whale Dolphin. Today they were “porpoising” a lot and close to the boat, but it’s really hard to anticipate when one will come out of the water, and by the time I see one and get the camera in position, it’s too late. So I tried a new technique of just holding the viewfinder to my eye, focused on the water, finger on the shutter button and waiting. Eventually a dolphin came into view and I jammed the button down. Here’s what I got:

Northern Right Whale Dolphin

Monterey Bay, September 13

This is my first blog post ever. I’m not convinced the world needs yet another person trying to be heard on the Web, but I do want to share my experiences and photos with others, and some seem to appreciate it, and this is the easiest way.

I went on my fifth pelagic of the year on Saturday with Monterey Seabirds. It was a very dark and gloomy day, but the seas were greasy calm and it wasn’t too cold. This is a great time of year to be out and it was birdy (and mammaly) all day. We headed north towards Santa Cruz county since the SCZ bird club was on board and that’s where the storm-petrel flocks have been lately.

I photographed this Buller’s Shearwater early, and it was so dark due to heavy, gray skies that I had the ISO cranked to 3200. Very noisy, but a decent image.

Buller's Shearwater

I think it was Todd, but someone saw a Manx Shearwater near the back of the boat. This is not a common bird in California waters, but it’s pretty regular these days. This guy is in serious need of a molt.

Manx Shearwater

Manx Shearwater

We also had a Flesh-footed Shearwater, which is uncommon, but regular these days.This guy had something wrong with one of his primaries and was probably missing at least one as well.

Flesh-footed Shearwater

At one point we came across a huge group of hundreds of Pacific White-sided Dolphins and a few Northern Right-Whale Dolphins. This youngster wanted to show off.

Pacific White-sided Dolphin

We finally found the storm-petrel flock, but they never came in close enough for a good photograph. Of course the light had really improved by this time. We were so far north we didn’t get back to Monterey until after 4. It was a great day. Here are some more images from the day.

Black-footed Albatross

Pink-footed Shearwater

Sooty Shearwater

South Polar Skua